So I recently found TyranoBuilder and a friend of mine and I have been playing around with it. (Edit: people have been telling me that TyranoBuilder is not the best thing to use for VNs. So think carefully about what you want to use.) We've been musing about trying to make a VN with it and publishing it for real on Steam...

...The only problem is it comes with an extremely limited gallery and neither of us have the skills to make OCs. So I wanted to throw my hand into the pond and see if there's anyone here willing to give it a shot with us before we go onto the internet and beg people on various sites to let us use their work in a commercial product.

My friend is more of the tech savvy kind so he'll be helping with figuring out all the really cool features we can do with TyranoScript. He's also pretty decent with photoshop so we shouldn't have any problem with formatting the pictures or making a custom title screen, buttons, etc.

Also we haven't really decided on a story idea yet. I know that a lot of artists have stories they want to tell so I'm kind of curious what they would want to make with someone like us in their back pocket. Pitch me an idea if you're up for it and if it sounds good enough we might actually help you make it. Otherwise I'm fine with coming up with an original story line with everyone's input. I have a few ideas of my own but I know that artists don't usually sign on to a project for free if they're not immediately invested in it. I don't want to be that guy who comes in here trying to get everyone to do my thing. For me good leadership is leadership that listens.

As part of the team working on the ever in progress MR VN Project, I'm afraid I'm too busy to lend my talents here, but I do have some advice:

Keep the first one short. Build up to something longer. It's more important to have a finished product. You're going to run in to a lot of issues you never expected, so it's better if your first finish line is clearly in sight. Once you have mad one, it will also be a much easier path to the second, and so on and so forth.

I spent the money on Tyranobuuilder last winter during the last steam sale. Please take my word for it when I say you'd better far better off taking the time to learn Ren'Py as the go-to VN engine. It's not as immediately user-friendly, but the python-based coding will do you a lot better than TyranoBuilder's limited toolbox.

Ultimately, you may be better off commissioning an artist rather than relying on charity. Just getting 2 or 3 characters with a range of facial expressions could set you back a hundred bucks or so (before backgrounds and CG's), but you'll be able to make a much better (short) first project. Spending money also helps to get you motivated into justifying yourself into finishing a project. You could just as easily be the smart ones on this forum to finish a VN project. Break the cycle, man.

I too can speak from experience. Don't go in for a huge project. Finish a small project first. On the long run having finished projects could also get people to work with you because you will have something to show for yourself.

Also, I too vouch for Ren'Py. It's really quite easy to use, just takes a little bit of learning. There are good tutorials on YouTube about using Ren'Py. The script is easy to learn.

Make small sample VNs which allude to a bigger story. If you get good reception for the sample, then you can likely find artists that would make the time investment.

Keep the first one short. Build up to something longer. It's more important to have a finished product. You're going to run in to a lot of issues you never expected, so it's better if your first finish line is clearly in sight. Once you have mad one, it will also be a much easier path to the second, and so on and so forth.

Yeah we were thinking of just making a ten minute game to start off with and then taking that and expanding it to a full-fledged one. Set some milestones and have our friends play through them while recording them and putting it up on YouTube.

I spent the money on Tyranobuuilder last winter during the last steam sale. Please take my word for it when I say you'd better far better off taking the time to learn Ren'Py as the go-to VN engine. It's not as immediately user-friendly, but the python-based coding will do you a lot better than TyranoBuilder's limited toolbox.

I'm sure Ren'Py has more customization (I looked into that one too) but I'm not sure if we'll need anything fancy for what we're considering. I'll look into it a bit more and see what kind of projects have been done with it and how fancy they are. It is free so it's not like it would be a pain to switch over at any time.

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Ultimately, you may be better off commissioning an artist rather than relying on charity. Just getting 2 or 3 characters with a range of facial expressions could set you back a hundred bucks or so (before backgrounds and CG's), but you'll be able to make a much better (short) first project. Spending money also helps to get you motivated into justifying yourself into finishing a project.

I do have some money laying around but I was thinking that I should probably figure out how many characters we would need before asking for commissions. But that is good to know: $100 for a full set of expression for two or three characters is not that bad. Here I was thinking it would be a lot more...

I did look into a lot of royalty free backgrounds and such and I found a dA group that offers the use of these kinds of things if only you get permission, commercial or otherwise. CGs will be the hardest thing to get, I'm sure.

Make small sample VNs which allude to a bigger story. If you get good reception for the sample, then you can likely find artists that would make the time investment.

Didn't even consider that. Although as stated before a smaller game was the intention to begin with.

Anyway I just wanted to see if anyone here was up for it. My friend and I are both in the business of getting some passive revenue streams so I don't think finishing will be a problem. But this is past me saying this. Future me might not see it the same way.

I may or may not be interested in joining for this. I wouldn't be able to offer professional grade images, but sketches are something I could likely do. That said, I'm currently in collage with little spare time so any help I could give would be sporadic until Christmas break and then again once the spring semester starts.

Anyways, I'm working on my own trilogy of fairly long VNs, but I don't have much experience with making them. I've dabbled a bit with Ren'Py lately so I know some of the codes for that.

Coming in again to be a grumpy old man and hope that I burst the "Tyranobuilder is great" before it spreads. Believe me, I was on that train once myself. Trying to swap from one platform to another is about as far removed from cut-paste-play as you can get.

And $100 for a 3-character set is still low-balling that pretty hard. This would probably get you the sketches or uncolored linework from the type of internet artists you'd probably be choosing from. If you want pro work, it's them pro prices that are gonna sting.

I'm sorry. I'll stop being the no-fun-allowed guy, I promise. Go have fun! If anything, using your own, however subpar, art assets will probably give a better sense of accomplishment and fulfillment than waiting around to pay or beg. But if you're gonna charge people money for something, just make sure you start avoiding the cheap shortcuts now.

I may or may not be interested in joining for this. I wouldn't be able to offer professional grade images, but sketches are something I could likely do. That said, I'm currently in collage with little spare time so any help I could give would be sporadic until Christmas break and then again once the spring semester starts.

Sketches would be fine. From what I'm hearing getting professional grade work is going to be the hardest thing if you're doing it for cheap so perhaps just getting something together as a proof of concept would be best to start off with. (We still have to learn all the scripting after all... Having some basic pictures to help visualize what the final product might look like will be of great service.)

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And $100 for a 3-character set is still low-balling that pretty hard. This would probably get you the sketches or uncolored linework from the type of internet artists you'd probably be choosing from. If you want pro work, it's them pro prices that are gonna sting.

...But if you're gonna charge people money for something, just make sure you start avoiding the cheap shortcuts now.

Thanks for the tips Nobrains. I'll make sure to check out the links.

Also if you mean by "uncolored linework" the actual picture just without color then that might actually work. My friend has a knack for graphic design so perhaps he could color them. ...I didn't think of that either so getting all this information has been super helpful. Hmmm...much to consider.

Sketches would be fine. From what I'm hearing getting professional grade work is going to be the hardest thing if you're doing it for cheap so perhaps just getting something together as a proof of concept would be best to start off with. (We still have to learn all the scripting after all... Having some basic pictures to help visualize what the final product might look like will be of great service.)

Alright. Do you and your friend use skype? That would be the easiest way for me to stay in contact. If not, we can work something else out.

I hear Ren'Py is a good program for making dating sims/visual novels. Also RPG Maker.

I could help do art if you'd like! o3o I love visual novels~

Yeah, we switched over to Ren'Py after posting here; my friend and I have already compiled all the scripting resources we need to do a vanilla dating sim too. Ren'Py being free really helped and it's not as unintuitive as it might seem at first. (Or perhaps I just have a knack for scripting? I had all the things I needed down in a few hours of research and testing over the course of two days.)

I looked into your work and its decent. Can you draw other styles though?

This is a general thing for all the artist who are interested, in considering the kind of art style we wanted for the VN we thought we'd go with something close to Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. It's kind of generic but that's ok. Perhaps it would be easier to draw that way.

Quick question, are you guys in a rush? I'm -sort of- interested in helping out art-wise /character concepts, game sprites/, though time is currently erratic with me nowadays. Q u Q

We're not in a huge rush, no. We still have to write out the entire story we're working on so that's going to take a significant amount of time. It's going to be a large project but we already have a cut-off point planned from the beginning of the game to show off our Alpha version and open it up to user input. As of now we would only need 4 sprites to get things rolling (we're not worried about having multiple poses atm). See above for the art style we're looking for.

--Thanks again to everyone who's shown some interest and gave us some pointers. I got waaay more of it than I thought I would so we're sorting out everything with everyone involved. Love this place~! You all are awesome and so supportive.

I looked into your work and its decent. Can you draw other styles though?

I can! o3o If you've only looked at stuff on this website, my styles changed a bit these days. But theres some new stuff on my DA (link in the signature)I can also modify my style to match the Irregular Highschool style o3o Since it's so simple

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I'm rainbowolfe, and i love to draw! I write fanfiction, create an original comic of my own, and have a passion for anime and cereal!